Emacs Macros and the Power-Macros Package

Writing Emacs macros doesn't have to be hard—Mr. Pedersen helps you get “more power”.

Managing Power-Macros

When you have defined a number of macros, you might want to
perform various functions to manage your macros. This is done by
pressing CTRL-c m. It will bring up a
buffer like:

the one shown in Figure 1.

What you see in this buffer is your power-macros, each
separated with a line of dashes. Many keys have special meanings in
this buffer (just like the keys have special meanings in the
buffer-managing buffer or in the dired buffer).

Pressing the ENTER key on top of one of
the fields allows you to edit the given field. Editing a field
means either to change its content or copy the macro to a new one
with the given field changed. You specify whichever of these
meanings you intend, when you have pressed ENTER
on the field.

Figure 1. Emacs Power-Macro Buffer

Deletion of macros is done in two steps. First, you mark the
macros you want to delete, and next you tell Emacs to actually
delete them. If you know either the buffer-managing buffer or
dired-mode, you will be familiar with this two-step process.

If you are now ready to learn more about Emacs, visit my home
page at the URL mentioned earlier.

This article was first published in Issue 47 of LinuxGazette.com,
an on-line e-zine formerly published by Linux Journal.

Jesper Pedersen
Jesper Pedersen is the author of the
book Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours, the program “The
Dotfile Generator”, the Emacs package “Power Macros”, and is
chairman for the Linux User Group on Funen in Denmark.